# Can I Run AI locally?

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Can I Run AI locally? and 14 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Shows which local AI models your hardware can run. Critics say results are often inaccurate for some hardware, and the dark theme is hard to read.

## Why people recommend it

- Glanceable rankings of runnable models (2 comments): "Open with multiple browsers (safari vs chrome) to get more "accurate + glanceable" rankings." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367654)) "Now I can see exactly what models I can run locally." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47372505))
- Well-liked, described as nice and cool (2 comments): "Cool thing! A couple suggestions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366284)) "The tool is very nice though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47368744))

## What people warn about

- Small, low-contrast text on dark theme (3 comments): "Text is pretty small which isn't good, but I'm glad to see it when sites don't succumb to the make-dark-mode-lighter trend." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47375421)) "low-contrast text on too-dark theme is, uh, barely readable for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47369823)) "barely visible grey text on black background" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47370700))
- Inaccurate results for some hardware (5 comments): "This does not seem accurate based on my recently received M5 Max 128GB MBP." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367991)) "It gives me answers far lower than my real-world usage on my setup" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47368233)) "This site presents models in an incomplete and misleading way." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47372550))
- Assumes dense models, ignores mobile GPUs (2 comments): "this calculator is telling you that you should be running entirely dense models" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47368354)) "This lacks a whole lot of mobile GPUs. It also does not understand that you can share CPU memory with the GPU" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366742))
- Wrong model names and broken controls (3 comments): "it doesn't react to changing the RAM amount in the combo box at the top" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367130)) "the website lists "M4 Ultra" which however does not exist" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47371229)) "The website says that code export is not working yet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367565))

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Can I Run AI locally?", https://hackerapproved.com/p/can-i-run-ai-locally-website/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).